'Glee' star Matthew Morrison, onstage and in the recording studio

Matthew Morrison, the man who's been inspiring musically inclined outcasts with his catch-phrases andwhiteboard on "Glee" since 2009, recently headlined the Washington Performing Arts Society's annual gala. "Mr. Schue" also has a new album, "Where It All Began," coming out June 4; he's the first artist on "The Voice" judge Adam Levine's new label, 222 Records.

"Where It All Began" is Morrison singing covers of his favorite Broadway standards. "It's with a full orchestra," he said by phone from Los Angeles before the Washington gig. "I'm singing some great Broadway standards that I kind of grew up singing. This is the kind of music that I love."

Morrison also talked about his gig on "Glee," his Broadway past, and how this whole singing-'n'-dancing thing he's doing now was actually a total accident.

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Retro romantic: "I released my [self-titled] first album last year, and it had a pop sensibility to it, but this album is the album I wanted to make before even that one. I've always loved these songs -- that's the world that I came from, the Broadway world. . . . My favorite song to sing is probably 'On the Street Where You Live,' from 'My Fair Lady.' And my favorite song to perform is a 'West Side Story' medley; it's a mash-up of six 'West Side Story' songs. I really love to sing, dance, perform. . . . I wanted a Gene Kelly flair to what I'm trying to do."

Family matters: "It was really by a fluke [that I started performing]. I spent the summer in fifth grade with my grandmother in Arizona . . . and they put me and my cousin into a children's theater program. And I just fell in love with it . . . [Then] I went to a performing arts high school, but that was the second part of my day. So I went to a regular high school with cheerleaders and a football team, an absolutely normal high school from 8 until 1:30, and then I was on the other campus from 2 to 6."

On going pro: "I think it was when I was in high school, when I was trying to decide what college I was going to go to. Because I had several opportunities -- I was a big soccer player -- to play soccer for different colleges. But my Mr. Schue, a mentor, he actually steered me in this direction. He said, 'I've seen a lot of people go through this school, and you have something very special.' "

Thank goodness, because. . . : "I'm 34 years old now, so my soccer career would be over."

Teenage dream:"I got my first Broadway show when I was 19. I was the white break-dancer in 'Footloose.' . . . I'm so happy how it happened and when it happened. I don't know if I would have been able to deal with this kind of success that 'Glee' was for all of us at too young an age."

Feeling a little rusty: "I don't have any musical numbers [on 'Glee'] nowadays, so I probably sing maybe twice a month. Which isn't much at all! I'm used to singing eight shows a week on Broadway."

Off-camera clique-ing: "I think a lot of them [the actors who play students] still think of me as their teacher, as a mentor to them, because that is the parameters of how we started the show. So I think there's always going to be that distinction between us. I do tend to hang out with the people who play adults on the show. Jane Lynch is probably my best friend on the show, and Jayma Mays [who plays Mr. Schue's main squeeze]. It is funny how that divide carries over off-set. Jane plays a complete witch of a crazy woman, [but] she is probably the sweetest woman you'll ever meet."